~ snails in art

Tag Archives: BML

In the British Museum, Print and Drawings Department, this engraving is part of the collection, entitled “Ora Quinta di Giorno”. It was made by Louis François Mariage around 1803–1806 after a design by Raphael. The description reads: “Fifth hour of the day: draped female figure, on dark ground, holding a bunch of herbs and gesturing to the sun; below, a scene representing a dove, a snake coiled around an altar,a lizard and a snail” [1].

This engraving from the Print and Drawings Department in the British Museum is dated ca. 1587 and was made by Jacob Matham (1571–1631), an engraver and publisher from Haarlem, after a design of his stepfather Hendrick Goltzius (1558–1617). He began as an engraver, and established his own publishing business in Haarlem in 1582. For the next six years, Goltzius held a monopoly in the northern Netherlands on publishing designs by contemporary artists. Between 1586 and 1590 Goltzius’ print publishing activities blossomed and he travelled to Italy in 1590-91, leaving Jacob Matham and Jan Saenredam in charge of the business. Around 1598 he handed over all his engraving and publishing activities to his stepson, Jacob Matham. Goltzius gave up the business of printmaking completely after 1598 to concentrate on painting until his death in 1617 [1].

This engraving is one in a series of seven called “The Vices” and pictures sloth with a female figures, a snail on her hand, together with a resting donkey.

The snail is stylised, sinistral, the animal with only the two larger tentacles, and an eye-spot.

An engraving designed and printed during the late 16th century, entitled “Christ before Caiaphas” is now in the collection of the British Museum [1]. The description reads: “to left, Christ brought to Caiaphas by soldiers; Caiaphas dressed as a priest seated under a canopy to right; in a decorative border with insects including a snail and a grasshopper”. The artist who designed this engraving is Maarten de Vos (1532–1603), a painter and draughtsman who worked in Antwerp. He was a follower of Frans Floris.

Actually there are two snails and a shell to be seen. In the left border a dextral snail, in the right border a sinistral snail and a dextral shell seen from below.

From the series “New specimen of cast-metal ornaments and wood types”, this wood engraving is plate 41 with eight images printed in four rows of two each. The print was made by Thomas Bewick (1753–1828), who was wood engraver; apprenticed to Newcastle engraver Ralph Beilby, 1767-1774, and worked in partnership with him between 1777-1797; in partnership with his son Robert Elliott Bewick from 1812. This print is now in the British Museum, Dept. Prints and Drawings [1].

One of the images is labelled “The snail”. It is – judging from the colour pattern – modelled after a specimen of Cornu aspersum (Muller, 1774). Remarkable is – given the date of ca. 1820–1840 – the mirror image, making the snail looking sinistral.

In the British Museum, Dept. Britain, Europe and Prehistory, this two-handed vase is part of Waddesdon Bequest. It was carved from a single block of honey-coloured agate and richly decorated. The vase is assumed to be of Roman origin (5th century), and has later been decorated in England (presumably 19th century). The long curatorial description details it in every way, and from it I take the part describing the location of a snail [1]: “The disc itself is similarly decorated only on one side; the engraved design, filled with brilliant translucent enamels, has a wide border around the circumference so that when the circular fillet of gold is inserted it can be pressed against the perimeter of the disc without harming or obscuring the enamelled decoration. The latter comprises small vine branches with bunches of grapes, leaves and tendrils; three of the branches curl to form three complete circles abutting a smaller circle in the centre. Within the branches are depicted a dragon-fly, a snail and a butterfly, each alternating with a perching bird”.

The snail itself it rather stylised (which seems natural given the material and the size), with two tentacles and a sinistral shell.

A carved draught’s-piece or table-man, made from boxwood, with depiction of a soldier fighting a helmeted snail on a wall is in the collection of the British Museum, London (Dept. Britain, Europe and Prehistory), and thought to be of 13th century English origin. The curator’s comments reads as follows “Circular carved pieces such as this one were not necessarily used for Draughts alone – Backgammon is another possibility. There are many examples of tablemen in ivory and bone, with religious, secular and mythical subject-matter” [1].

The scene seems to me a variation on the ‘knight v. snail’ theme (cf. this post where the figure from Pinon was reproduced). The shell is stylised and sinistral, the animal has two tentacles and is humanised.

Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home; a dog sitting up on its front paws to left outside a kennel, looking upwards, a snail approaching its empty water bowl in the left foreground. This is a print in the British Museum, Prints and Drawings Department, made in 1874 by Alfred Lucas (1841–1886) after a drawing of Edwin Landseer (1803–1873), who is known for his illustrations of sentimental animals [1].

The snail is somewhat stylised and appears as a sinistral one (thus mirrored) in this engraving.

This engraving was made ca. 1593–1603, after an original of Jacques Le Moyne (see previous post), by Chrispijn (van) de Passe (I); this Dutch draughtsman (1564–1637), engraver and publisher began his career in Antwerp but by 1589 had fled via Aachen to Cologne, and settled in 1611 in Utrecht, the Netherlands. The print is part of “Hortus Floridus: Altera Pars” and was published in cooperation with Hans Woutneel in London [1].

The description reads “60. Ash and 61. Rose; at left: an ash shoot with leaves and seeds; at right: three roses in different stadiums of blooming: one bud, one half blooming, one fully blooming; a snail on a small mount at bottom centre” [1].

The shell is sinistral and ribbed or segmented. The head of the animal is lifted off the ground, and seems to be closely set with long hairs. A very weird idea (?), but perhaps we should settle for a bunch of grass which happens to be on the mount…

This is an earlier print –from 1727– illustrating the same fable of yesterday’s post. The print was made by Pierre Fourdrinier after William Kent. The building in the background is Burlington’s casina at Chiswick [1].

Part of the text is printed on the verso side of the engraving.

Note that the snail is here sinistral, illustrated in ‘medieval style’ with ‘sheepy’ shell and an enlarged aperture from which the humanised animal emerges, with two tentacles only.

Note:
[1] BML, inv. PD 1934.0608.5. http://to.ly/FHxJ. Also a biography of printmaker William Kent can be found here.

In 1793 John Stockton published his edition of John Gay’s “Fables” (a second edition, retaining the 1793 title-page, was produced c1811). The book was “embellished with Seventy Plates”. These were engraved by various artists after designs by William Kent and John Wootton from the first edition of Gay’s “Fables” from 1727, and after designs by Gravelot from a later edition with new fables (1738). Twelve of the plates in Stockton’s edition were engraved by Blake. Like the other engravers employed in the book, he used considerable artistic license in translating the earlier designs onto new copperplates. This impression is in the published volume of the “Fables”, the 1793 edition; the engraving is in the Prints & Drawings Department of the British Museum, and is an illustration to “Fable XXIV. The Butterfly and the Snail” in Gay’s “Fables”, Vol. 1 (London, 1793); a formal garden, with a gardener and a neo-classical building; in the right foreground a snail and a butterfly [1].

The full text of this fable is [2, p. 36]:

FABLE XXIV.Butterfly and Snail.

All upstarts, insolent in place,

Remind us of their vulgar race.

A butterfly, but born one morning,

Sat on a rose, the rosebud scorning.

His wings of azure, jet, and gold,

Were truly glorious to behold;

He spread his wings, he sipped the dew,

When an old neighbour hove in view—

The snail, who left a slimy trace

Upon the lawn, his native place.

“Adam,” he to the gard’ner cried,

“Behold this fellow by my side;

What is the use with daily toil

To war with weeds, to clear the soil,

And with keen intermittent labour

To graft and prune for fruit with flavour

The peach and plum, if such as he,

Voracious vermin, may make free?

Give them the roller or the rake,

And crush as you would crush a snake.”

The snail replied: “Your arrogance

Awakes my patience from its trance;

Recalls to mind your humble birth,

Born from the lowliest thing on earth.

Nine times has Phœbus, with the hours,

Awakened to new life, new flowers,

Since you were a vile crawling thing!

Though now endowed with painted wing,

You then were vilest of the vile—

I was a snail, but housed the while;

Was born a snail, and snail shall die;

And thou, though now a butterfly,

Will leave behind a baneful breed

Of caterpillar sons—thy seed.”

The snail is a dextral specimen, with two larger tentacles and one of the smaller to be seen. The colour pattern does not match a well-known species, but this may be due to the “considerable artistic license” of the printmaker.